Distributing WinZip Jobs

WinZip®jobs are suitable for distribution by system administrators and others who are responsible for multiple computers or multiple users. There are a few things you should keep in mind.

The job file (WJF extension) contains all the information that WinZip needs to run the job. It is the only thing you need to distribute. Note, however, that distributing the WJF file does not schedule the job to run automatically on the user's computer (see below).

WinZip jobs require WinZip Pro to be installed on the user's computer.

When specifying the items to be zipped and the destination folder for the Zip file, WinZip uses generic folder names for common system folders wherever possible. At runtime, the generic folder names, such as <Documents> expand to the physical location for the current user/machine (for example, "C:\Users\jdoe\Documents"), ensuring that your job will run correctly on different machines and/or under different user accounts.

Distributing a job file does not schedule the job on the target computer. WinZip jobs are scheduled by the Job Wizard, using the Windows task scheduler, when the job is created or edited. There are two ways to schedule a job locally:

Click the Backup tab and then click the Edit button to open the job for editing (XP users, choose Edit from WinZip's Jobs menu) and click Next in the Job Wizard until the Specifications Complete panel is reached. Click Schedule, enter the user account name and password, click OK, and click Finish.

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Directly schedule the job using the Windows task scheduler. The command line for the job should be:

If you want the job to run unattended, the user must run the job once manually and check the box in the security dialog labeled Don't ask me again about this job. Note that this security dialog will appear again if the job is subsequently moved or modified.

The job's log file can provide valuable information about any errors that might have occurred during the job run. You may want to set up a mechanism to FTP or e-mail this file to a central location after the job run.